


The Years of a Mortal's Life

by inklingdeco



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: M/M, weddings are sappy what can i say, who doesnt love a cute wedding?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-22 02:36:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11370807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inklingdeco/pseuds/inklingdeco
Summary: How Maui and Makani learned what it feels like to be wanted, what it feels like to be in love, and what it feels like to be married. Another fic for Maui and my original male OC, since lots of people have been saying they think they're a cute couple!





	The Years of a Mortal's Life

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> I sure move fast, don't I? I haven't written a fic where they offically get together as a couple, and here I am writing them getting MARRIED. Hmm, maybe we'll see that in this fic...? Stay tuned!
> 
> Please be aware, I tried looking up as much info as I could about Polynesian wedding and marriage proposal customs, but information online is super limited. (It's all tourist stuff about having a "traditional" wedding in Hawaii or whatever, which I didn't take as being super accurate.) So, just so you know that I tried my best, and if anything is grossly inaccurate to the point of being offensive, PLEASE let me know.
> 
> I would like to thank everyone for leaving comments in support of my dumb little canon/OC couple. I'm happy at least a few people like the idea of Maui having a boyfriend.
> 
> I would also like to thank all the artists who have done art of Maui and Makani for me, which I will link here later! It make me so happy to see art of my character.
> 
> Also, one final tidbit before I get to the story already- the bit in the story about Maui asking Makani if he thinks he's a lair, that's a real thing that was told to me when I was in therapy that helped me a lot. When someone compliments us, it's easy to go, "Oh, you don't mean it," or "That's not true," but that devalue's the other person's opinion. You're saying you think they're lying to you, which makes their opinion invaluable, and no one thinks that about their friends. No one thinks their friend's opinions aren't worth anything. They wouldn't lie to you and say you're great if they didn't think you're great!

Makani was 25 years old when he and Maui first started dating, and was 37 when they got married.

When Makani was 25, he realized the (extremely annoying) man who had insisted he join on his mission was actually the (extremely sweet, endearing, caring passionate, HANDSOME-) man he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Makani, however, knew he didn't have a chance.

Maui was, first and foremost, a demigod, who wouldn't be interested in someone as...simple as he was. Makani didn't consider himself extraordinarily special in a way that would make him stand out among the no doubt millions of humans Maui had come in contact with from his thousand or so years of life. Humans lived, they died, and Maui persisted on by himself, unfettered. He cared about humans sure, but in the way that you care about a pet- you take care of it and like to see it happy, give it gifts that make it excited, spoil it every now and then, but you know its life is much shorter than yours, and accept that it's not going to be there soon. You move on and get a new dog. You move on and meet new humans. 

Makani lumped himself in with the general crowd of humans Maui would come to know in passing but ultimately would only be a speck in his life. Heck, he had MET Maui once before their "official" meeting, when Maui, reinvigorated after restoring the heart of Te Fiti (a story that become more exaggerated every time he told it, that Makani never fully knew until he met Chief Moana of Motunui,) had gone back to his old days of visiting humans and giving them gifts of unbelievable value. He would pop from island to island, his appearances being rare but celebrated, a god himself walking on the same ground as his people. 

When Makani was 18, Maui had visited his island during the summer, Makani only getting a glimpse of him at first due to the crowd that had formed around him. Makani could remember standing on his toes to try and see Maui in person, before his father had shoved him on the back, urging him forward to go get some of the...some kind of fruit Maui had brought, it looked yellow and had spikes on it. Shoving forward, Makani tried to make his way through the crowd before breaching the front, immediately getting shoved forward from the sheer mass of people in the crowd and falling onto his face, and onto the fruit that Makani and the new cuts on his arms could now confirm DID have spikes on it. 

People had gasped and shook their heads in disapproval as Makani quickly tried to sit up, the juice from the couple of fruits he had crushed stinging the cuts from the spikes. He tried to scramble away, before feeling someone grab him by the head (his hand was big enough to literally grab Makani by the head like a doll, much to his surprise) and put him on his feet. Makani was face-to-face with Maui, shapeshifter, demi god of the wind and sea, hero of men (women? all?) feeling 2 feet tall and looking like an idiot.

Makani remembered how Maui had just smiled and said something along the lines of "if you wanted some so bad, you could have just asked!" before throwing what he ended up calling a pineapple into Makani's arms, turning him around and playfully shoving him back into the crowd before asking everyone "who wants some?!" to uproarous applause.  
Maui's charming, boyish smile stuck in Makani's mind as much as his father's yelling at him that night for making a fool of himself (and therefore, his father) in front of the whole village.

Even then, Makani didn't consider himself special in Maui's eyes. He knew who he was, a random human Maui didn't even remember meeting prior to their second faithful meeting that turned into a quest to get Tāwhirimātea to continue producing the wind and storms, but in the span of Maui's incredibly long life, just another story. Makani was not prideful enough to claim he was anything more than another chapter in Maui's life.

Maui stuck around, however. He was what convinced Makani not to return home, and that Makani's "happy ending" didn't need to be making up with his father and living at home again. Makani's happy ending was moving on, making his own life, creating his own story. He didn't know where he was going to go next, but was surprised at Maui's shock that he wasn't going to stick around with him.  
Why would Maui still want him to stick around? Their mission was done, order restored- did he feel bad for Makani? Moana, at least, had a home to go back to, and a new chapter of her life to begin. Makani reasoned that Maui knew Makani was now all alone, didn't have a plan, and probably took pity on him. That had to be it. 

Travelling with Maui was exciting. They went everywhere- they visited islands, Makani met GODS, they witnessed Moana officially being crowned the chief of her village, they visited other islands and Maui continued being a hero while Makani got to witness it in person; but the best moments were the moments where they were by themselves.

No humans to impress, no one but the two of them talking like people. Makani came to realize Maui genuinely enjoyed his company, which was baffling to him for a number of reasons. But, it was nice to be...wanted.  
The two of them grew up without people wanting them. Everyone has a need to be important in at least 1 person's eyes, to be desired by something, and Makani had learned that Maui too didn't feel like he was truly wanted until recently. He was learning that, while in his head most people didn't want him, they wanted what he gave to them, at least two people in the world wanted him to exist. 

It was nice to be wanted. It was nice to relate to someone and finally be able to just talk. It was nice that Maui let Makani cry and didn't tell him he was less of a man for doing so, it was nice that Maui was immensely patient and never made Makani talk if he didn't want to, it was nice that Maui let him open up in his own time, live at his own pace, and never feel pressured to be a certain way or do anything.  
Maui thought it was nice that Makani didn't care if he was a demi god, Maui was just Maui. He thought it was nice that what Makani liked about him was all the human parts of him, not what his powers were or what he could make, Makani liked talking, and smiling, and laughing, and hugging, and Maui's personality itself. He thought it was nice that Makani knew whenever he was stand-offish, it wasn't him trying to be mean, it was nice that Makani understood he had gone a thousand years without talking about his feelings and it was taking him longer to learn how to do it than it was for Makani himself. Maui thought it was nice he didn't have to put up an act around Makani.

\---

Makani was 25 years old when a new tattoo appeared on Maui's back.  
It was on his upper back, right below his neck, on the tattoo he tried to hide with his hair. Maui's most hated tattoo, the tattoo of his mother throwing him into the ocean. It didn't cover it up, it made it smaller and pushed it away.  
The tattoo was of Makani. 

They were trapped in a cave of pink crystal, lorded over by a trickster god with the head of a pig who could feed off their emotion. They had to get through the cave without the crystal covering them up completley at the risk of being stuck there forever, the crystalline walls lined with the horrible visages of humans forever stuck in terrified or hysterical poses, being used like batteries for the rest of their lives.  
Maui had to explain the cave to Makani as soon as they entered and he realized where they were. The god sat upon a pink throne and laughed as Maui had grabbed Makani's arms and told him not to panic, which of course, made him panic. Around his feet, the crystal flooring of the cave begin to grow between his toes, causing him to gasp and try to pull away.

"Makani, listen to me- look at me, okay?" Maui had said, directing Makani's attention back to his face. (Which was easy to see, because Maui had not-so-subtly starting wearing his hair in a bun when Makani had mentioned months ago he liked Maui with his hair up.) Maui lightly brushed Makani's cow-lick out of his face and spoke very calmly, continuing,  
"This stuff feeds off of insecurity and sadness. The more that get on you, the worse you feel. You just have to make it across while not thinking about that stuff, okay? I know you can do it." 

Makani started to breathe easier and nodded as Maui let go of his arms and held his hands, gently leading him forward, coaching him the whole way with "you're doing great, just a little more, almost halfway there, you're amazing at this, Makani," with each couple of steps. It made Makani laugh, which shook the crystals off his toes and made it a little easier to walk.

The trouble appeared when a small, jagged crystal flew up by Makani's ear and started speaking to him.

"He's having to treat you like a child because you ACT like a child," it said, followed by a second one by his other ear that continued, "You're such a baby. You can't go two seconds without feeling BAD about yourself?"  
Maui jerked his hands away and turned around, glaring up at the god on the throne and demanding,

"And just WHAT is this now?!"  
The god had laughed and said something about it being something new he was "just trying out," prompting Maui to growl angry and having to seriously consider not just turning into a bird, flying above the crystal and knocking the god's teeth out. He snapped out of it when Makani, behind him, started making distressed sounds.  
Maui turned around to see Makani knee-high in pink crystal, desperately trying to swat away crystalline bugs talking to him in a cacophony of insulting voices.

"See? You couldn't even do this one simple thing. He thinks you're a total burden."  
"All you do is weigh him down! It would be better if you just died here."  
"Are you going to cry?!"  
"Think of how said he's going to be when you die here, all because you couldn't keep it together." 

The voices contradicted each other, and with each new bug, a new idea tried to get planted in Makani's head. The crystals kept growing around his knees, immobilizing him as he kept swatting them away with tears in his eyes. The crystals around his legs themselves were making him feel worse, making it harder and harder not to take the gnats around his head seriously. He was believing what they were saying.

Maui heard a voice by his own left ear as he stood,  
"You looked away for two seconds, and now he's going to die. You're SUCH a hero."  
Maui jumped and hit the crystal away with the back of his hand, inhaling and exhaling slowly before walking forward. He understood the function of the cave, having been here before, and knew he just had to contradict everything told to him and keep his mind positive and calm. He could get Makani out. Makani was stronger than this. They would get out of here. 

Makani had stopped trying to swat the bugs way when he got waist-deep. He didn't have the energy to anymore, the crystal making him so sad and scared he was completely immobilized. Maui kept himself calm in the face of a terrifying image (he's not going to be trapped here forever, you're going to save him, he's not going to be trapped here forever-) and reached out, pulling Makani's hands away from his face and watching him cry. Some crystals pricked up around Maui's toes at seeing Makani cry, but he kept his thoughts objective.

"Makani, you're okay. You're safe, we need to get out of here."

Makani stuttered through his tears, looking around and shaking his head a little.

"I-I-I d- I'm going to- I'm holding you back!"  
The crystals buzzing around Makani's head chimed in with similar sentiments, a few of them also throwing in that he looked ridiculous when he cried, and that men didn't cry. 

"Makani, do you think I'm a lair? Do I lie a lot?"  
"What? No! W-Why would you think- I-I don't think that-"  
"Then you know everything I'm telling you is absolutely true. If you don't think I mean it when I say I think you're amazing, and wonderful, and you're strong enough to get through this, you're calling me a liar. And I'm not a lair, right?" Maui said, smiling at Makani reassuringly. Makani blinked and nodded.  
"You're not a lair. You wouldn't lie to me."

Maui slowly talked to Makani, contradicting everything the bugs were saying to him as the crystal slowly fell away from Makani's waist. Some of them were just to distract him and get his mind off of their current situation, ("And you're funny- remember that joke you told me a few days about about the seaweed and the diver? How did that go again? It was really funny-") bu a lot of them were compliments and things Maui did honestly and truly think about Makani.  
The trouble came when the god on the throne, and therefore the crystals flying around the pair, got desperate. All the bugs flying around Makani's head suddenly got louder, chiming insults to Makani like,

"Your father never did love you, Makani!"  
"NO ONE can love you, Makani. If your father couldn't, how could anyone else?"  
"Remember when he would hurt you? Remember how scared you were to be around him?"  
"He tried to let you back into his life, you selfishly ran away."  
"If your father didn't love you Makani, *he* won't either. How could he? He doesn't even like you."  
"You're a dumb human to him. He doesn't like you how you like him."

Makani's eyes went wide and the crystal shot up to his midsection, locking his forearms in place on his body as the crystals rapidly grew. He could feel their power seeping into him, urging him to start crying again, to give up, to believe what he was being told. After all, there wasn't a thing the bugs were saying that he hadn't thought himself before.

Maui's eyes also shot open at the sudden surge of emotion, as he looked back at the god with the pig's head laughing uncontrollably at the prospect of having a new battery soon, cackling and chattered on about "stupid, insecure humans!"

Maui quickly looked back to Makani, who now had his eyes locked to the floor and was crying again, mostly not out of his own volition but at the poisoning of the crystals.  
"Makani, you're not worthless!" Maui said, holding Makani's hands tighter and getting closer to him. Makani shook his head silently, unable to believe that Maui wasn't lying to him anymore.  
"N-No, it's true! Makani, you make my life better just by being in it." Makani shook his head again, shutting his eyes and crying a little harder.  
Makani choked in reply, "How could I make your life better, I-I'm just- I'm just-"  
"You're not JUST anything," Maui said, trying to look Makani in the eye, but Makani kept his eyes closed. "You're, you're...you're why I get excited when the sun comes up, I never cared about that before."

Makani had opened his eyes and looked at Maui quizzically though his years.

"I care about it because, well, you sleep at night and I don't. So there's a long time when you're asleep and I don't get to hear you talk, or hear your jokes, see you smile, so...when the sun comes up, I know you're waking up soon. And that means we get to spend another day together."  
Makani remembered feeling floored by that statement, so much that he didn't feel the crystals shaking off his arms and chest as Maui continued. 

"I go do things because of you, I-I want to actually explore the world so I can show you things and see you get excited..." Maui was glancing down at the ground, as if he was wrestling with feelings he had never tackled before, and for the first time, putting them into words. "I like seeing you smile in a way that's different then when I make other people smile, yours is more special to me because- because-...Look, I don't know all the details here, okay? It's complicated, because I don't think I've ever cared that much about whether or not someone's smiled before I met you, not with anyone else. Whenever you cry, it makes me upset too, because seeing you happy has become the most important thing in my life and it makes me feel like I can't fix whatever's bothering you. If I had my way you would be happy all day, every single day, for the rest of your life and I want that to happen, I want to spend the rest of my life with you because I want you to never experience a day of sadness for the rest of the time you're with me, Makani!"  
The crystals down to his ankles, Makani still couldn't move, but he blinked at Maui incredulously as Maui squeezed Makani's hands and ducked his head down.  
"I don't know...if this is what 'love' feels like, because I've never really...done that sort of thing before," Maui said, keeping his head down, "but if wanting to see you to wake up every day and never experience a moment of sadness, i-if wanting to make you smile for the rest of your time on this Earth, if wanting nothing more than to protect you, and hold you, and keep you close to me forever is love then...I'm completely in love with you." 

To this day Makani can not remember the feeling of the crystals shattering at his feet, he can not remember practically launching himself forward to hug Maui tighter than he had ever hugged anyone before, he hardly remembers the god on the throne running away in fear before Maui could do anything to hurt him.  
He remembers being kissed for the first time in the cave, he remembers it not feeling scary at all and the thought of giving his life over to someone who was giving his life away to him in return was not a terrifying concept, but a joyful, peaceful, and beautiful one. He remembers being 25 and knowing what it was like to be loved for the first time in his entire life. 

Makani had noticed something had changed when he pulled away, an arm around Maui's neck, both of their faces red and the two of them unable to pull away from each other. He saw a reflection on the ceiling shift, the pink crystal above their heads acting like a mirror. He squinted, before pulling his arm off of Maui's neck and pointing up to the ceiling, saying, "Maui- it's changing! Y-Your- the tattoo, something's happening!"

Maui looked off to Makani's left, looking at a reflection of a reflection on a crystal slab next to Makani. Makani turned his head and watched as the tattoo Maui hated most was pushed off to the side, still there, but smaller, and was replaced with a moving tattoo of Makani smiling inside an ornate circle. The smaller Maui on Maui's back stopped being concerned with pulling an island out of the sea and dropped the rope, looking up at the new tattoo completely awestruck. The smaller Makani seemed capable of movement, as when the mini-Maui jumped up and hung onto the side of Makani's bubble, pushing his hair back and pointing at him flirtatiously, mini-Makani silently giggled into his hands and waved.

"I guess you're pretty attractive by tattoo standards too," Maui said, smiling and looking down at Makani. His smile faded when he saw Makani's disappointed and almost scared expression, still looking at the reflection.  
"What's wrong?"  
"...I didn't cover it up," Makani replied, looking Maui in the eye like he was sorry.  
Maui smiled lightly and shrugged one shoulder.  
"It's okay. That's the most important tattoo I have. It shouldn't be covered up. But...I'm glad you're there to help make it better." 

\----

When Makani was 29, Maui asked if he would ever want to get married.

Makani had shrugged, telling Maui it didn't really matter to him. They lived by themselves, so no one would really know they were married except them, so it was really just a title more than anything. Makani jokingly had mentioned he hadn't planned on dating anyone else, so if that was the issue, Maui didn't have to worry. He did tell Maui they could start calling each other their husband if Maui wanted, but it didn't matter to him.

Maui had been...okay with that answer. He agreed that there wasn't an issue with commitment (Maui wasn't even sure he would ever date anyone again AFTER Makani, which Makani protested frequently, arguing he wanted Maui to be happy after he died so he should date people if he wanted to,) and he was right- not a lot of people would know they were married. It would really be the same if they just started referring to each other as "my husband." 

That answer didn't sit well with him for very long, though, solely on the basis that Makani later admitted it partially wasn't a big deal to him because he learned not to expect marriage at a very young age.

"I mean, at the very least, it would have been an arranged marriage, knowing my Father," Makani had explained later, "so I stopped getting my hopes up for a nice wedding a really long time ago. I wanted one when I was a kid I think, but I knew it was between getting an arranged marriage to a woman I wouldn't want, so it wouldn't be a happy occasion, or being with a man like I wanted but never getting to be 'officially' married." Makani had explained it with a casualness that somehow made Maui very upset. The fact that it was something at some point in his life Makani really wanted, but it was something else Makani's (dumb, stupid, terrible, horrible, piece of-) Dad had taken away from him. And he wasn't going to stand for that.  
He was going to make Makani feel special.

Makani didn't question at all why Maui suddenly wanted to learn how to weave. He took it as indication that Maui wanted to start making his own clothes like Makani did and stop wearing leaves all the time. (Even if, in Makani's opinion, the leaves suited Maui really, really well.)  
It was a slow process, learning a new skill when you were over a thousand years old. Makani was patient like he always was, sitting with Maui, arranging his hands correctly to weave patterns, praising how much he improved, laughing when Maui's fingers got tangled. But he worked for years to perfect his weaving, some of it with Makani, lots of it in secret, until he had made not only a completley new wardrobe for himself, but enough beautifully intricate mats that Maui felt like he could present a dowry to a parent that wasn't technically there.

When Makani was 34, Maui proposed.

It started out as Maui saying he was just treating Makani to an extra-special day (like he didn't do that almost every other day) and Makani just smiling and taking it in stride. Maui had made him the most impressive meal he had made for him in awhile, which they ate on the beach together surrounded by a dozen torches. They swam in the with dolphins (thank you Ocean, yes I'll stop throwing trash in you now-), danced on the beach, Maui gave Makani a new outfit he made himself which he put on, as well as a matching red flower crown Maui wove together since red was Makani's favorite color.  
He told Makani he looked so nice, they should go back home so he could admire him in better lighting. Makani had quirked a brow, smiling with a confused expression on his face while Maui grabbed his hand and walked him back to their house, only urging him with "come on, come on," any time Makani tried to stop and ask a question.

They arrived back to the hut, beautifully decorated with insanely ornate mats all over the room, on the floor, pinned to the walls, hanging from the ceiling, making their home more colorful than it ever had been before. They looked like something a chief would own, something you would give to a neighboring chief as a dowry if-

"So," Maui said, stepping around an awestuck Makani and standing in front of him, "this is NORMALLY the part where I would ask your father if this is a suitable dowry for you. But, since it's kind of just you and I..."

Maui kneeled down on one knee and held Makani's hand in both of his, smiling up at him lovingly. It took Makani a few moments to process what was happening, but as soon as it did, it was as if a wave knocked him back and the undertow dragged him away, the sheer force of the situation dawning on him. He immediately slapped his free hand to his mouth, the flower crown dropping over one of his eyes as he immediately teared up in disbelief. 

"I guess I should just ask you, is this a dowry worthy of your hand in marriage? Or should I try again? Because I'll remake these a hundred times if it means one of these times ends in you and I becoming a 'thing.'" 

Makani laughed and pushed the headdress back on top of his head, blinking tears out of his eyes as they rolled down his cheeks and just laughing in disbelief. 

"I'm not hearing a no~"  
"Yes! Of course this is- yes!! Yes yes yes!" Makani was immediately down on his knees, hugging Maui and crying tears of happiness into his shoulder. 

\---

When Makani was 37, he got married.

Makani did not think marriage was something that could ever happen to him. It relied on a series of factors he thought could never possibly line up, so he had given up the dream a long time ago.  
Yet, here he was, on Motunui, the chief of the village helping him put together a headdress of white flowers together in her home. 

"I'm not...too old for this, am I?" Makani had said to his other best friend in the world besides his fiance, Moana. (They had forgone "chief Waialiki" almost immediately, even her people just called her by her first name.)  
"Too old? You do realize the man you're marrying is over a thousand years old, right?"

Makani smiled and rolled his eyes, sticking a plumeria flower in the headdress. 

"I mean old by OUR standards. I mean...I look at my reflection sometimes and...I definitley don't look how I look when Maui first met me. I'm not that kid he fell in love with. It has to be weird for someone who doesn't age to be marrying someone who looks so different, right?" Makani glanced over to his side at a reflective bowl Moana had on her table. He noticed the wrinkles starting to form around his eyes and mouth, the grey hairs around his temples that had started to appear and made him wonder if Maui knew this sort of thing would even happen to him. "I mean...I would have looked a lot nicer if we had done this when I was 25. Or even 35."

Moana smiled softly and leaned forward, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Makani, if you heard the way he talks about you, you wouldn't have a doubt in your mind he still finds you just as attractive today as he did when you were in your 20's. Especially because you're ALL he talks about when you're not around," she said, fake-huffing and pretending to look annoyed as she leaned back. "Never wants to hear about what I'M doing."

The two of them laughed, Makani clenching and unclenching his hands out of nervousness. Moana smiled, putting the finishing pikake flowers on his flower crown before standing and placing it delicately on his head.  
"You're going to do great," she assured him. 

\---

Makani remembered stepping out of Moana's house and Maui catching a glimpse of him before the ceremony started. He remembered the look Maui had, immediately floored by Makani in all white and how beautiful he looked, with the grey hair, with the wrinkles, with his amazing beautiful wonderful smile. Makani had smiled and walked over to Maui; Makani in a loose-fitting white shirt and pants, Maui in a white skirt with an ornate pattern, as Makani put a garland of green maile leaves around Maui's neck. 

"I'm doing this kind of early but...you also weren't supposed to see me early, so..."  
"You look...I...uh...Wow." Maui replied. Makani laughed into his hand, thinking momentarily how nice it was not to be the one so nervous he was stuttering for once.

The wedding was on Moana's island so Makani could have a real ceremony surrounded by people. They had no intention of having it back on Makani's home island, where he would probably be met with disdain (at least from his father) so Moana's people were more than happy to have the wedding there. Everyone, whether they knew Makani personally or not, celebrated with all the love and enthusiasm of it being their closest friend or family member who was getting married. The two of them had never felt so welcome in a community their entire lives. They had never felt so deeply loved than they were when they looked each other in the eye and pledged their lives to each other. 

Makani forgot his fears of Maui not thinking he was remarkable, thinking he was too old, thinking he was getting ugly, thinking he was just another boring human.  
Maui forgot his fears of Makani not liking the real him, of thinking Makani would abandon him as so many people had done before, that anything could separate them, and that he wasn't going to make the remaining years of Makani's life full of love, happiness, and devotion. 

They continued doing everything they had been doing before. They traveled the world, they danced on the beach, they were patient and kind to each other. They climbed mountains, they witnessed happiness and sadness, they rode the waves of their life together, whether it be good or bad. In that sense, Makani was right, nothing really changed but the title. However, the two of them were well aware their lives had changed for the better.

\---

When Makani was 77, he died peacefully.  
He was married to a man who did not age, but never once thought Makani was any less beautiful than the day they met. (Which was the day Makani fell on the pineapples when he was 18 which, yes, Maui DID remember as being the day they met.) He hoped he had fulfilled his promise to Makani of making every remaining day of his life happier than any one before they met.   
Makani knew he had.


End file.
